Paul's Second Missionary Journey

The event

After a sharp disagreement with Barnabas over whether to bring John Mark along again, Paul instead set out with Silas, revisiting the churches of Galatia before the Holy Spirit redirected them away from Asia and Bithynia and toward Macedonia, confirmed by Paul's vision of a man pleading, "Come over to Macedonia and help us" (Acts 16:9). Along the way in Lystra, Paul added a young disciple named Timothy to the team, and at some point Luke himself joined the group, signaled by Acts shifting into the first-person "we."

In Philippi, a Roman colony and the first European city to hear the gospel from Paul, a businesswoman named Lydia was the first convert, and Paul and Silas were later beaten and imprisoned after casting a spirit of divination out of a slave girl. An earthquake at midnight sprang open the prison doors, and rather than fleeing, Paul stopped the terrified jailer from taking his own life, leading him and his household to faith that same night (Acts 16:16-34). From Philippi, Paul carried the gospel to Thessalonica, Berea, and finally Athens, where he engaged the city's philosophers at the Areopagus, reasoning from creation and conscience to the resurrection of Christ (Acts 17:16-34).

The journey's longest stay came in Corinth, roughly eighteen months, where Paul planted a church that would later require several of his most substantial letters, and where his appearance before the proconsul Gallio provides the chronological anchor for the entire journey. This journey planted the gospel firmly on the European mainland for the first time and produced two of Paul's earliest surviving letters, 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

Dating

Exact start and end dates depend on unresolved questions in Pauline chronology; the Gallio inscription (c. AD 51-52) is the one fixed point within this journey, and other dates are reckoned relative to it.

Scripture references

• Acts 15:36-18:22

Further reading

• Bible Odyssey (SBL): Pauline Cities